


five plus one

by Ejunkiet



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, as nothing is ever straightforward with these two
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6923032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Frank turns up in Karen Page's life unexpectedly, and the one time he didn’t.</p><p>Or the one where Frank beats up some bad guys, Karen gets a dog, and the devil returns to Hell’s Kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. firsts

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a prompt series for [Kastle Week](http://ejunkiet.tumblr.com/tagged/kastleweek), but time got away from me. The rating will be raised for the final chapter of this series, you've been forewarned. 
> 
> (the music for this includes [Work Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3g0d6Cgqyg) by Hozier, which is part of my writing playlist for these two, and just lovely.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The silence between them grows, but it’s not uncomfortable, exactly. There’s something left unfinished between them, hanging thick and heavy in the air that neither of them want to address._

The first time begins with brutal, efficient violence.

It’s what she’s come to expect from the Punisher, the man that was once Frank Castle, but she’d never get used to seeing the results of his actions up close. She never wants to: the thought of being desensitized makes her sick to her stomach.

Frank doesn’t bother to ask her if she’s alright; just keeps a steady hand on her back to guide her through the tight maze of streets and alleyways around the docks, his finger tense on the trigger as his eyes flit over the shadows and the overlying rooftops that flank their path.

This was not a part of the city that Karen was familiar with, a fact her source- turned-ambush had counted on – and god, she wasn’t stupid, Foggy knew where she was, and she’d had one finger on the speed dial, the other tightly clasped around her canister of mace – but even forewarned, she hadn’t been prepared for the scope of their operation. If Frank hadn’t been there-

She stumbles and Frank’s there to catch her, propping her up as he swings her arm over his shoulder and braces her against his side. They stop in the shadow of an abandoned factory as she waits for the world to stop spinning, her head pounding with a migraine, which was to be expected after the blow she’d taken. She hadn’t lost consciousness at least, managing to beat back her assailant before they’d made to swing again; although whether that was a good or a bad thing in light of the events that followed, she couldn’t really say.

Frank doesn’t pressure her; just waits for her to adjust, his eyes painted black in the yellow cast of the street lamps.

“How are you here?” There’s so much she wants to say with that. It’s been weeks, _months_ even, since she’d last heard whispers of the Punisher, and for him to reappear _now_ , just in time to stop this attack, is a little too convenient for her to ignore.

Trust him to turn up just in the nick of time, though. If he’d been there half a second later-

She breaks off from that train of thought as she’s caught by another swell of nausea, a result of the vertigo that’s making her feel as if she’s standing on the deck of a rocking ship. (It’s beginning to look worryingly like she has a concussion.) Her throat tightening, she digs her fingers deep into the folds of Frank’s jacket, grounding herself with his solid presence, before her stomach lurches and she has to twist to the side, dry heaving against the pavement.

She takes a moment to catch her breath, chase the taste of bile from her mouth, spitting against the sidewalk. 

“Fuck.”

Frank presses a hand against her back, a steady pressure that rubs in sure, tight circles, and it helps as she regains her composure. It isn’t long until he’s urging her forward again though, although their pace slows as they enter a more residential district, and the sounds of the city filter back into her awareness.

He doesn’t speak as they make their way through the city, eyes flickering between her and the surroundings as he leads her through the streets of downtown New York. They make one more stop just a few blocks away from her new apartment when she stumbles again, fighting to keep her footing as her legs tremble beneath her, and they wait it out, tucked out of view within the recessed doorway of her local grocer.

When he does speak, she’s almost forgotten her question.

“It’s my city. Someone had to take out the trash, now that Red’s gone.”

Red? It takes a moment for the association to click: Daredevil. Matt. He’d left soon after the events in the warehouse, just packed up and left the city with little more than a brief email that said something about London, a trip to Europe. She’d only skimmed over the details, somewhat surprised that she had been included in the mailing list. They hadn’t talked much, not since that last night at Nelson and Murdock.

A thought occurs to her: does Frank know? She thinks he’d read more into the speech at the trial than she had at the time - god, had she been naive - and she suspects he already knows the link between Murdock and Nelson and the elusive Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Her suspicions are confirmed when she hears him huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh, or at least the closest thing to a laugh that the man that used to be Frank Castle was capable of.

“You know, then.”

“He told me.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, and she glances back at him to find him watching her, his mouth pressed into a tight line as he examines the bruise blossoming above her right temple.

“You should call your lawyer friend. The other one.”

“I will.”

He helps her to her feet and they make their way past the last couple blocks to her apartment. From the warehouses to here, the journey has probably taken them less than twenty minutes and that tells her a lot about her neighborhood: she should probably move. (Again.)

They stop at her door and he waits as she pulls out her keys and unlocks the deadlock she had installed the last time the darkness of the city had turned up on her doorstep. He steps inside, but doesn’t get farther than the threshold, eyes flickering around her apartment as she drops her keys into the bowl and steps out of her heels.

She lets out a breath and turns to face him, finding his eyes already on her, dark and unreadable. He holds her gaze when she meets it, and she bites her lip, uncertain of where exactly to proceed from here.

She has questions for him, questions that have been waiting since that last night in the forest – about the implications of his final words and how far he intends to continue along this path, shouldering the mantle of an undead vigilante. Her head is pounding, though, and the taste of bile is rancid in her mouth, so instead she just offers him a smile, and it’s genuine, in spite of everything.

“Thank you, for tonight.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The silence between them grows, but it’s not uncomfortable, exactly. There’s something left unfinished between them, hanging thick and heavy in the air that neither of them want to address.

He turns to leave, but pauses as he enters the hall, glancing back over his shoulder as he lingers on the threshold. “You should get a pet or something. Make the walks safer.”

Her smile grows just that bit wider, and she huffs out a laugh, glancing down at the myriad of locks on her door. “I’ll consider it. Take care of yourself, Frank.”

He watches her for a moment longer before nodding, pulling the cap lower over his face before he turns back to face the hall. His fingers twitch in a two-fingered wave over his shoulder as he makes his way towards the stairway, and then he’s gone.


	2. flutter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _and as much as she hated to admit it, Frank was right._

The next time she wakes up with her heart fluttering within her chest, blinking away the afterimages of her nightmares as she untangles herself from sweat-soaked bed sheets, she decides that something has to change. She can’t keep living like this; she won’t be ruled by fear.

The very next morning finds her at the local pound, signing the papers for a scrappy pitbull cross that’s covered in scars and recently healed scrapes, hinting at a much harder start in life than it deserved. She’d asked to see the lost cases, the ones that were only days away from euthanasia, thinking that if she was going to do this, she might as well do it right, and give another lost soul a chance at a better life.

If the pitbull she settles on reminds her of someone she knows, she doesn’t acknowledge it.

The dog is friendly and well-behaved despite its outer appearance, settling in with little difficulty after she brings it home. Karen enjoys the company, another warm body occupying her space, and it doesn’t take long for them to fall into a comfortable routine, afforded by the flexible schedule granted to her by the Bulletin. She’s never felt safer in her apartment or during her walk home in the evenings, and as much as she hates to admit it, Frank was right.

She hasn’t seen or heard from Frank since that night. She keeps an eye on the crime beat, but he must be keeping a lower profile than usual; either that or he’s left the city altogether, as fewer reports of gang shootouts that have left both sides equally dead have pinged on her radar, and the rumors surrounding the resurrection of the Punisher have begun to die down.

It’s been a quiet few weeks and she’s spent it mainly on writing, piecing together the information she’d collected for her latest investigation in order to find the story, the answer to a series of business closures that had been reshaping the face of Hell’s Kitchen. It was tedious work, consisting of hours scouring over legal documents and poorly managed financial statements, but in the end, it'd been worth it when she'd uncovered the missing link: an overseas investor with questionable ties that owned majority stock in the companies that were buying up the properties.

It looked like the gangs were trying to regain their foothold in Hell's Kitchen. She'd have to run this by Ellison - her evidence, the story, the whole shebang - but if she was right, then it was going to be big.

The floor of her newly-renovated apartment is littered with abandoned drafts, and there’s a bottle of wine on the floor by her knees, the warm buzz of alcohol dissipating its way through her system when a knock sounds on her door. It’s met with an answering bark, the scuffle of nails on cheap laminate flooring, and she quickly puts down her glass and gets to her feet, grabbing the dog's collar as he jumps at the door, shoving his muzzle beneath the door and the frame.

She can see the shadow of a figure waiting in the hall outside and she pauses, her heart rate kicking up a notch. It's late, nearly two in the morning, and she wasn't expecting company.

Hushing the dog when he lets out an expectant whine, she steps up to the door and peers through the peephole, wishing she'd had the forethought to grab her purse, her mace, _something_. She’s caught off guard when she sees who’s standing on her stoop though, and keeping one hand wrapped tightly around the dog’s collar, she unlatches the chain and pulls the door open.

“Frank.”

Frank Castle, in the flesh, with a bloodied nose and fresh bruises purpling around his eyes, as if he'd just walked away from a fight. He offers her a crooked smile, his gaze flickering down to the over-excited pitbull currently straining against Karen’s grip with something approaching approval. He gestures towards the dog. “Can I?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, she nods, and he lowers himself into a crouch, offering the dog a hand to sniff.

The dog’s muscles tense beneath her grip and before she has a chance to hiss out a warning, the dog has lurched itself free of Karen’s tight hold on its collar and leapt full-force at the man in front of her.

“Oh shit, wait-”

Frank doesn’t have enough time to react before he’s knocked to the floor by fifty pounds of wiry muscle and fur. Karen lunges for the dog’s collar, struggling to pull him back – but it’s too late: the dog has shoved its muzzle into Frank’s face and proceeded to lick the living shit out of him.

Frank looks as if he has been hit by a truck, and Karen can’t help it – she laughs. The look on Frank’s face, coupled with the unbridled enthusiasm of her dog attentions is priceless, and it's so abrupt and ridiculous that she can't help herself; can't stop once she starts.

Franks grabs for the dog’s collar, and together they manage to pry the dog back, if only a few scant inches - just enough to stop the onslaught. There's a smile on Frank’s face though as he pushes himself upright, unscathed aside from the thin sheen of saliva that now covers his cheeks, and he scratches the animal behind the ears. “Easy, easy there, big guy.”

When she has regained her grip on the dog’s collar, and firmly but surely dragged him through the apartment to shut into her bathroom, she turns back to Frank with an apology ready and waiting on her tongue. “I should have warned you, he does that.”

Frank shrugs it off, jerking his chin towards the closed bathroom door, where a chorus of barks and whines has begun in earnest. “What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t have one yet. At least,” she amends when Frank glances up at her, surprised, “not one that he will listen to.”

She’s been trying to come up with a name, but the animal won’t respond to anything other than ‘dog’. He’s been quite stubborn about it, and after several hours of a decidedly one-way conversation (“Rex? Troy?“), she’d given up, figuring that it’d do for the time being.

Now that Frank is here, she feels a little ridiculous about the whole situation. She glances back up to find Frank’s eyes on her again, crinkled at the edges, and she gets the distinct impression that he’s laughing at her.

“What did you try? Names,” he elaborates, a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth as he settles his weight back on his heels. “Which ones have you tried?”

Honestly, at this point, she was running out of names she hadn’t tried. She frowns, crossing her arms as she considers the closed bathroom door. The dog has settled down a little now, although she can still hear the click of his claws as he paces the tile. “I’ve tried Bull, Fido, Butch… he sort of looked like a Rocky to me.”

Frank’s shoulders are shaking, even as he ducks his head to hide it and he laughs outright when he catches the narrow-eyed glare she directs his way.

"What the hell, Frank. Do you think you could do any better?”

He’s caught off guard by the question, and his brows quirk upwards as he considers the question, scratching at the rough stubble that covers the lower half of his face

“Max.” His lips twitch as he takes in her nonplussed expression and he raises his shoulders in a shrug. “I’d put money on it.”

Talk moves swiftly onto business after that, and Frank leaves shortly after informing her that he’d caught rumors of a group of traffickers working in her neighborhood - as if she needed another reason to look for a new apartment - warning her to keep her eyes open and the dog close.

After the door closes behind him, Karen releases the pitbull from the bathroom, shaking her head as he makes a mad dash around the apartment and shoves his nose underneath the door, pawing at the hinges as if he could follow his newest best friend outside. She really hadn’t expected the him to take so well to Frank.

“Come _on,_ dog _. Down_ ,” she continues, and then, out of options - and just a little desperate - she tries, “ _Down_ , Max!”

For the first time since she’d brought him home, the dog actually listens to her. Hardly believing it, she tries again with “ _come_ , Max”, and she feels a mixture of relief and aggravation as the dog obeys without question, his tail thumping happily against her shins as he rewards her with a floppy grin.

“Max. Your name is Max.”

She doesn’t tell Frank, but it’s not as if she had a number for him to let him know, anyway.


End file.
